Word.ws English Dictionary

zero out

zero out verb: to reduce to zero.

Verb

zero out (third-person singular simple present zeroes out or zeros out, present participle zeroing out, simple past and past participle zeroed out)

  1. (transitive) To reduce to zero.
    • The bill was over $400, but the server zeroed it out as a gesture of gratitude.
    Synonyms:
    zeroize
  2. (transitive) To cut off funding for (a project).
  3. (transitive) To fill with zeros, replacing any previous contents.
    • to zero out an array
  4. (intransitive) To press or dial 0 in order to escape a voicemail recording facility and speak to an operator.
  5. (intransitive, slang) To go bankrupt.
    • What if he zeroed out on this case? He had spent the Carson case nest egg and was in hock for the next ten years if he had to pay what he was borrowing.2010, R. Thomas Roe, Palm Beach Gold, page 169
  6. (transitive) To kill (someone).

Synonyms of zero out

Forms of zero out

third-person singular presentzeroes out
third-person singular presentzeros out
present participlezeroing out
past participlezeroed out
pastzeroed out

Questions about zero out

What does zero out mean?
Zero out means to reduce to zero.
What part of speech is zero out?
Zero out is a verb.
What is the past tense of zero out?
The past tense of zero out is zeroed out.

Words near zero out in the dictionary

  1. zero morphs
  2. zero object
  3. zero objects
  4. zero one infinity rule
  5. zero option
  6. zero out
  7. zero period
  8. zero periods
  9. zero point
  10. zero points
  11. zero population growth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: zero out (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “zero out.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/zero_out. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.